History



Jean Piaget was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, on August 9, 1896. His father, Arthur Piaget, was a professor of medieval literature with an interest in local history. His mother, Rebecca Jackson, was intelligent and energetic, but Jean found her a bit neurotic -- an impression that he said led him to the field of pyschology. Jean Piaget (1896-1980), remembered for his extensive research on developmental psychology, explains the learning process by schemes (the organization of information on how things work), assimilation (the placing of new information into schemes), and accommodation (transforming existing schemes or creating new ones). The motivation for learning is the predisposition of the learner to adapt to his environment, hence to institute equilibrium between schemes and the environment. Continuous interactions among existing schemes, assimilation, accommodation, and equilibrium create new learning.
 * Jean Piaget **

Piaget explores four sequential stages of the psychological development of the young learner and believes teachers should be cognizant of these stages. During the Sensory-motor Stage, (before the age of 2) sensory experiences and motor activities dominate. Intelligence is intuitive in nature and knowledge; it is acquired through mental representation during the Preoperational Stage (from age 2 to age 7). At the Concrete Operational Stage (from age 7 to age 11), intelligence is logical, conserved, and dependent on concrete references. The Formal Operational Stage (after 11 years of age) is the stage when abstract thinking starts and the learner starts thinking about probabilities, associations, and analogies.

Piaget’s developmental theory of learning and constructivism are based on discovery. According to his constructivist theory, in order to provide an ideal learning environment, children should be allowed to construct knowledge that is meaningful for them. The constructivist classroom, according to Piaget, should provide students with several activities that challenge them to accept differences between students, discover new ideas, and construct their own meaning. Students working collaboratively together will help students to improve problem-solving abilities, and to accept individual differences of ideas. In an elementary Piagetian classroom, all of the senses are important and necessary part of the learning process.
 * Piaget's Constructivism**

For Piaget, the development of human intellect proceeds through adaptation and organization. Adaptation is a process of assimilation and accommodation, where external events are assimilated into existing understanding, but unfamiliar events, which don’t fit with existing knowledge, are accommodated into the mind, thereby changing its organization. Countless studies have demonstrated–or tried to discredit–Piaget’s developmental stages. For example, it has become clear that most adults use formal operations in only a few domains where they have expertise. Nonetheless, Piaget’s hypothesis that learning is a transformative rather than a cumulative process is still central. Children do not learn a bit at a time about some issue until it finally comes together as understanding. Instead, they make sense of whatever they know from the very beginning. This understanding is progressively reformed as new knowledge is acquired, especially new knowledge that is incompatible with their previous understanding. This transformative view of learning has been greatly extended by neo-Piagetian research.

Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934), known for his theory of social constructivism, believes that learning and development is a collaborative activity and that children are cognitively developed in the context of socialization and education. The perceptual, attention, and memory capacities of children are transformed by vital cognitive tools provided by culture, such as history, social context, traditions, language, and religion. For learning to occur, the child first makes contact with the social environment on an interpersonal level and then internalizes this experience. The earlier notions and new experiences influence the child, who then constructs new ideas. Vygotsky’s (1978, p. 56) example of being able to point a finger displays how this behavior, which begins as a simple motion, becomes a meaningful movement when others react to the gesture.
 * Vygotsky’s Constructivism**

Vygotsky’s constructivism is known as social constructivism because of the significance of culture and social context. For Vygotsky, the zone of proximal development “. . . the distance between the actual development of a child as determined by the independent problem solving, and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more peers (Vygotsky: 1978)” suggests that cognitive development is limited to a certain range at a particular age. However, with the help of social interaction, such as assistance from a mentor, students can comprehend concepts and schemes that they cannot know on their own.

A Vygotskian classroom emphasizes creating one’s own concepts and taking ownership of one's own learning. This theory promotes active participation and collaboration between learners.Students work together in a teacher-student and student-student interaction to increase the learning that is taking place. Strategies such as questioning, predicting, and summarizing are utilized among group members in discussions and group projects throughout the learning process. In a Vygotskizn classroom, support and guidance are provided based on the needs of the students.
 * The Vygotskian Classroom**

Some examples of classroom activities that might be used in a constructive classroom are as follows: Students in a political science class can use a computer simulation to decide on global issues as representatives of United Nations. A geography class studying Turkey can take a virtual trip of tourist and historical sites and parks. The journalism class may publish a newsletter with scanned photographs, excerpts from the press and charts about a recent journey to space. As a final project, a sixth-grade history teacher may assign her students multimedia presentations of civilizations that prospered in Southern America. An aquatic science class could observe data on city water quality and communicate with students in other schools. The multiculturalism class students can build online genograms (family trees), and subscribe to genogram databases in search for relatives and the origin of their roots.

The Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s (1896–1934) relevance to constructivism derives from his theories about language, thought, and their mediation by society. Vygotsky held the position that the child gradually internalizes external and social activities, including communication, with more competent others. Although social speech is internalized in adulthood (it becomes thinking), Vygotsky contended that it still preserves its intrinsic collaborative character. In his experiments, Vygotsky studied the difference between the child’s reasoning when working independently versus reasoning when working with a more competent person. He devised the notion of the zone of proximal development to reflect on the potential of this difference. Vygotsky’s findings suggested that learning environments should involve guided interactions that permit children to reflect on inconsistency and to change their conceptions through communication. Vygotsky’s work has since been extended in the situated approach to learning. In his experiments, Vygotsky studied the difference between the child’s reasoning when working independently versus reasoning when working with a more competent person. He devised the notion of the zone of proximal development to reflect on the potential of this difference. Vygotsky’s findings suggested that learning environments should involve guided interactions that permit children to reflect on inconsistency and to change their conceptions through communication. Vygotsky’s work has since been extended in the situated approach to learning([|www.fountainmagazine.com])




 * Piaget's and Vygotsky's theories are the foundation for the psychological learning theory of constructivism. Each of us constructs knowledge through our own experiences and the way in which we intepret those experiences. Piaget and Vygotsky agree that learning is developmental and that environmental influences are present.Piaget's theory places more emphasis on the learner as the source of cognition, whereas Vgotsky's theory is influenced more by the social environment. The learner is dependent on the environment in this type of learning.


 * Vygotsky strongly believes in the role of social interaction in the development of cognition. He believes that learning is from the environment(society) and from within a person(skill base).


 * Both Piaget and Vygotsky appreciated the essence of building constructs and internalizing the knowledge given, rather than accepting the information as presented through rote-memory. Constructivist learning environments promote the learner to gather, filter, analyze, and reflect on the information provided and to comment on this knowledge so that it will result in individualized comprehension and private learning.

Vygotsky and Piaget’s theories are often contrasted to each other in terms of individual cognitive constructivism (Piaget) and social constructivism (Vygotsky). Some researchers have tried to develop a synthesis of these approaches, though some, such as Michael Cole and James Wertsch, argue that the individual versus social orientation debate is over-emphasized. To them, the real difference rests on the contrast between the roles of cultural artifacts. For Vygotsky, such artifacts play a central role, but they do not appear in Piaget’s theories.

For the American philosopher and educator John Dewey (1859–1952), education depended on action–knowledge and ideas emerge only from a situation in which learners have to draw out experiences that have meaning and importance to them. Dewey argued that human thought is practical problem solving, which proceeds by testing rival hypotheses. These problem-solving experiences occur in a social context, such as a classroom, where students join together in manipulating materials and observing outcomes. Dewey invented the method of progressive education in North America. The Fostering Communities of Learners (FCL) program, devised by Ann Lesley Brown and Joseph Campione, is a current attempt to put Dewey’s progressive education theory to work in the classroom.

In summary, Piaget contributed the idea of transformation in learning and development; Vygotsky contributed the idea that learning and development were integrally tied to communicative interactions with others; and Dewey contributed the idea that schools had to bring real world problems into the school curriculum

Woolfolk (2001) says the approach is based on the “research of Piaget, Vygotsky, the Gestalt psychologists, Bartlett, and Bruner, as well as the educational philosophy of John Dewey, to mention just a few intellectual roots” (p. 329). Although many advocates of this type of education disagree on the theoretical support and use of the constructivist pedagogy, they agree on recommendations to this type of instruction (Driscoll, 1994; Marshall, 1992):
 * 1) A complex and challenging learning environment is needed.
 * 2) Negotiation and shared responsibility must be included in the learning process.
 * 3) Content must be presented using multiple representations.
 * 4) The instructor must believe that knowledge is constructed in an individual.
 * 5) The instruction must be as student-centered as possible.



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